Finally! Tennessee Passes Freedom From Coercion Act

The newly-passed Freedom from Coercion Act, SB 3812, requires abortion facilities to post a sign in large 40 pt. Arial font in their waiting room with the words: “Notice: It is against the law for anyone, regardless of the person’s relationship to you, to coerce you to have an abortion. By law, we cannot perform an abortion on you unless we have your freely given and voluntary consent. It is against the law to perform an abortion on you against your will. You have the right to contact any local or state law enforcement agency to receive protection from any actual or threatened criminal offense to coerce an abortion.”

Hopefully this will help, at least to some degree, address the problem I wrote about previously.

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This entry was posted on Monday, April 5th, 2010 at 6:37am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Alas, I do not think it will help much, except as a moral victory. Women coerced into an abortion aren’t typically kicking and screaming; usually, people with emotional or practical power over them threaten all sorts of things that the police cannot prevent: the withdrawal of ‘love’ or financial support, for example. In these cases, the women are pressured into (semi-)voluntary complicity.

The moral victory consists in a state legislature recognizing, and forcing clinics to recognize, that Roe v. Wade hardly represents the fullest flower of human freedom.

What would be a very excellent and practically useful victory for us would be state laws requiring informed consent, especially the posting of signs listing alternatives, complete with phone numbers.

Small steps. While the culture of life cannot be legislated into existence, the existence of legislation that passes with “overwhelming support” is an indication of broad support for pro-life policies.

My prayer is that the Tennessee legislature will act more boldly, since it is reasonable to believe that it has a mandate from the people to do so.

In response to Ryan Haber’s comment about passing informed consent. Tennessee did pass informed consent, a 48 hour waiting period, and a requirement that 2nd and 3rd trimester abortions be performed at hospitals. However, the Tennessee Supreme Court found a fundamental right to an abortion through the Right to Privacy in our Tennessee Constitution in 2000.

Planned Parenthood and ACLU of Tennessee both sued the state and the case went to the supreme court with this finding. Therefore, these laws were struck down as unconstitutional as we are also finding that requiring an abortion facility to be licensed also is suspect to this disastrous supreme court decision. Tennessee now has more liberal laws on abortion than even our federal constitution.

That is why it is important that we pass a constitutional amendment which states that there is no right to an abortion in our state constitution. Tennessee Right to Life is working on this and the legislation is SJR127 and will be in the legislature for another round of votes next year.

Don’t get me wrong. I hope I didn’t come across as criticizing. I live in Maryland, of all states perhaps the home of the most aggressively pro-abortion laws in the nation. I wasn’t trying to put down Tennessee – just governments in general.